The Insect Woman

A screening of the film The Insect Woman, with an introduction by Irene González-López, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck College. Shōhei Imamura's film follows Tomé, a woman with an irrepressible will to survive whose life is defined by privation, lust and tragedy, sweeping through the underbelly of twentieth-century Japan from rural fields in 1918 to the factories and brothels of 1950s Tokyo. An unsparing, elliptical epic of generational poverty and abuse, anchored by an astonishing performance from Sachiko Hidari and praised for its immaculate deep focus staging.